


Around Every Corner

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [7]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little pitchers have big ears, and the reopened anomalies have implications that make Abby's blood run cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Around Every Corner

            “Mum.”

 

            The twins were identical, but Abby never failed to tell her daughters’ voices apart; unless they made a conscious effort to imitate each other, Lucy’s would always be softer, more timid, more English-sounding, and more prone to coming out with vile swearwords, on account of her habit of copying her father in everything she did. She turned away from the sink in the borrowed holiday cottage’s kitchen, and ruffled Holly’s hair. “What is it, Holl?”

 

            “Who’s Helen Cutter?” Holly said, and both Abby and Joel – entering the kitchen with Lucy in his arms, a brand-new plaster featuring the Black Widow on her knee – caught their breath. You can never know, of course, what children will overhear; but Abby wished violently that of all names Holly hadn’t picked that one to ask about.

 

            Helen Cutter. _Helen bloody Cutter_.

 

            She was dead, of course – well, as dead as it was possible to be, in a world where anomalies to the future were a reality. Caroline (and it was so _strange_ to see Caroline in a position of responsibility, and obviously good at it – well, she’d screwed up by letting Becker within a mile of Connor, but still, she hadn’t had much choice) had reminded them of that. Helen Cutter, Caroline had said, we need to consider Helen Cutter. She had futuristic technology, an anomaly map before any of us knew what they were. She must have had money or connections or both in the future.

 

            Mechanically, Abby tugged the hairtie out of Holly’s dishwater-blonde, caramel-lit hair and ran her fingers through it, removing the more egregious tangles, drawing her daughter close against her. She was going to be tall, Abby remembered inconsequentially – or at least, that was what the doctor had said. As tall as Joel. Would probably dwarf Abby by the time she was thirteen.

 

            Abby took a deep breath, pressed her lips against the top of her daughter’s head, and forced herself to focus on the problem at hand.

 

            Helen Cutter. Once she had been ambiguous, once there had been a chance that she could help them. Once, Stephen and Nick had been so convinced that she wanted to do the right thing, and then, because Helen could be malicious and manipulative and downright cruel, she had ripped Nick and Stephen apart and had almost brought the anomaly project to its knees. She had thrown in her lot with Leek, carelessly assuming that she could control him. She hadn’t wanted people dead in particular, her actions in Leek’s bunker showed that much – Abby remembered her saying _stop it, this has gone too far_ , and dimly knowing that if Helen was worried then she was in serious trouble – but she certainly didn’t mind them dying in the abstract. Just so long as they weren’t people in front of her, or people she cared about. Just so long as she didn’t know the details, and didn’t have to see them die, and blacken her soul a little more by turning away from their deaths.

 

            Abby looked down into her daughter’s eyes, bright blue and trusting, because of course the other thing Helen had wanted, after she’d wanted Nick or Stephen or what seemed to Abby like _any_ warm body to accompany her but before she’d wanted to wipe the slate clean and rid the Earth of the whole human race before ever they had a chance to evolve, was a lieutenant, a second in command. Someone to teach and train up on the other side of the anomalies. That, after all, was what she’d taken Liz Lester for. Who knew if Helen Cutter’s timeline still ran on, and she was still searching for a companion?

 

            Liz had been sixteen, Abby told herself. Almost seventeen. Helen wouldn’t want a _child_.

 

            Liz had fought back, had tried to kill Helen’s minions and escape, the bit of Abby’s brain that could still think like a predator answered. A child couldn’t do that.

 

            Abby knelt down and put her arms around Holly, pressing her daughter’s head into her shoulder and kissing her cheek. Holly, bemused and slightly worried, hugged her back. “Helen Cutter,” Abby said slowly, “was a nasty woman. She wore a lot of khaki. I’ll show you a picture.”

 

            She looked up and met Joel’s eyes. Lucy looked as if she wasn’t sure whether this situation would be best served by weeping piteously or not; Joel rubbed her back reassuringly and nodded, his gaze steady.

 

            “But promise me one thing. If you ever see Helen Cutter, either of you, you start running and you don’t stop until we find you.”

 

            She stroked Holly’s hair, and closed her eyes, squeezed them tight shut and tried not to cry, for all the things Helen Cutter had done, for everything she might still do to the people Abby loved, for all the hideous possibilities that had ripped wide open with the return of the anomalies. If Lucy saw her crying, she would almost certainly burst into sympathetic tears, and Holly would be so unnerved that she would probably start crying too.

 

            “Don’t worry,” Joel said quietly, firmly, his this-is-going-to-happen voice. “We will find you. We’ll be looking. And your mother _never_ loses _anything_ she wants to find.”

 

            “No,” Abby said, past the crack in her voice and the vision of Helen Cutter’s cryptic smiling face in her mind. “ _Never_.”


End file.
